Toast.
So my father. He’s very proud of his long-standing membership in the fraternity of Gamma Damma Iota (“The goddamn independents!” he bellows), but he’s also terribly rocky of rib; as an entrepreneur and a Southerner, this is, perhaps, not unexpected. He’s got a strong thick streak of leave-me-the-hell-alone, but looks to his bottom line first (only sensible; that’s where the government’s most likely to hit him, after all), and so he’s voted for an overwhelming assortment of Rs in his day: Ford, Reagan, Reagan, Bush, Bush, Dole, Bush, as a few for instances.
Anyway. Called the folks yesterday to let them know I’d broken my first bone in about 20 years. My father was pounding away in the background, putting the finishing touches on a pressed-tin ceiling for the downstairs den: they’d bought the tin from a shop in Nevada, apparently, that had stopped making pressed tin tiles back in the 1930s, and only recently started up again, blowing the dust off the 70-year-old molds and picking up pretty much where they left off. He came to the phone and teased me about breaking my elbow and we half-joked about suing the city and then he said, “You know, I really don’t know what I’m going to do in November.” Bush stubbed his toe on the economy, you see, and Bush stubbed his toe in Iraq—Dad doesn’t know whether they’re liars or woefully stupid (me, I say both, but he’s pretty much in the “they wanted a little too hard to do what they thought was the right thing” camp), but whichever—Bush isn’t making him very happy at the moment.
“I’m starting to think,” he said, “that maybe the best thing is a Democratic president and a Republican Congress. Just tie the whole country up for a few years so nothing gets done and we have a chance to sort it all out.”
And hey: who am I to disagree with my father?
Yeah, I've never been quite clear about why people talk about "gridlock" as if it were a bad thing. Keeps the bastards out of everyone else's hair.
In Massachusetts, I got to read liberal legislators bleating that they had to vote for one of the anti-gay-marriage amendments, because the issue "has to be resolved," and the government "needs to move on." It was so weird--the issue has been resolved. The SJC ruled that same-sex marriage is legal in MA. Resolved. Bing. It ain't gonna get any resolveder anytime soon, unless one of the sides decides to give up and go away. Hold not thy breath.
I guess I can see why if you're a legislator, you'd have such a legislator-o-centric view of the universe, but the columnists in the paper are known to fret about the danger of a "gridlocked" gov't, too. Silly people.
Personally, I've always been surprised to hear about people talking about gridlock as if it's a good thing. There's an awful lot of damage that's been done to the country that needs to get repaired.
Now, if only we could get people to agree on what the damage was, what the repairs should be, and who should be doing the repairing...
I should probably note, my unbounded respect for my father (and Sebbo) aside, that I agree with Papa about as far as "Democratic president." But hey: if he's being tempted however briefly and evanescently to the sinister side...
"...Just tie the whole country up for a few years so nothing gets done and we have a chance to sort it all out...."
*Nothing* will induce me to assume that your father is imbecile enough to imagine that anything would actually get "sorted out" under the scenario that he posits.
So: you tell us. What did he *mean* ?
Mr. Wilhoit: if you are unfamiliar with the perspective that insists government is an "other," largely if not entirely parasitic in operation, good only for unreeling red tape by the ton and spitting up blizzards of paper that do little to nothing but get in the way of the honest, wealth-creatin' efforts of thee and me and the rest of us American dreamers, well—I suggest you spend a little more time on the internet.
if you are unfamiliar with the perspective that insists government is an "other," largely if not entirely parasitic in operation etc
Man oh man, so three weekends ago I spent a great deal of time explaining to my little (16 year old) brother why the above stated view is more or less evil and misguided. It's scary to think that he could be led astray considering that A) he comes from my family with my terribly liberal father, and me of course, and B) he lives in Portland and where is there a more liberal place to be raised I ask you?
It's a very sad story you see, my mother put him in the boy scouts, and kept him there in something quite akin to a social prison. Now all of his friends are crazy teenage versions of libertarians and republicans. A sad story indeedy doo.
I suppose that it also doesn't help that whenever my dad speaks to my brother on the topic (they have a good relationship mind you) my father starts cursing and spewing roughly formulated gibberish about Bush. And that is my story.